


Famous Last Words

by linman



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-02
Updated: 2010-02-02
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:40:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linman/pseuds/linman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River knows exactly where to put each step, but it doesn't always help. Set during the end sequence of <i>Serenity</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Famous Last Words

River has been busy.

            They all have.  They’ve all been busy since they won—or lost, depending on where you stand.  Nobody stands consistently in one place, either, except for Mal.  Whatever happens, Mal is always standing in one place: a fortified height overlooking a dark valley full of carnage.  But lately he is standing there full not of furious grief but of troubled contemplation.  River has always admired his ability to throw himself body and soul into whatever reality he’s chosen, and this new contemplative detachment is no different.

            River’s own contemplative detachment is of a different breed.  She’s always had it, because the shadow-shift between ordinary reality and the deeper truth of people’s hearts requires it.  Nothing she feels is her own, except her resentment at having to feel it.

            Zoe has given her a new pair of boots and told her she needs to wear them in the construction area.  “No call to be picking up shrapnel when the war’s over,” her mouth said.  _Ain’t no amount of practice gonna make this easier_.

            The boots are not quiet, but River does not mind.  She is moving purposefully now, not wandering, between engine room and bridge and hold, her hands now healers like Simon’s, her mind bent to a specific set of tasks.

            There are many tasks, and that is good news to all of them, especially on days when the outcome behind them looks like loss.  They all spend as much time as possible on Serenity, speaking with one another only about the repairs at hand, and come back, one by one, to collapse in the apartments provided for them.  Except for Simon and Kaylee, of course.  Everybody knows this too.  “_Aiya, wo men wanle_,” is all Mal utters under his breath, but without particular urgency, and for once there is no palimpsestic shadow beneath the words.

            For once, everybody knows at least half of what River knows.  It’s nice to have company.

 

*

 

Serenity is healing.

            “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men,” River sings as she checks a wiring corridor for shorts.

            “All the king’s men, _wo de piyan_,” Jayne growls cheerfully around the knife in his teeth.  _Wonder if there’s any dumplings left, or if Mal has collared them all_.

            River can afford to feel affectionate toward Jayne.

            River steps outside the hold to take a breather.  A pulley-chain is rattling and groaning nearby, and Mal is shouting directions.

            The shadow is here again, however.  River picks it out unerringly, watching them from between one dock and another.  The shadow, she has been told, doesn’t have a name.  She knows that Mal has done his best to stand between her and the shadow-man, even now:  every now and then he says quietly to her, “River, go have your lunch,” or “The bridge needs sweeping,” or just “Go stay in your apartment for a little while”; and she does it.  She is not afraid of the shadow-man, and neither is Mal, but once she felt him say, in a rare fit of savage passion:  _I’ll be damned if I let her pick up any more gorram secrets._  This pained her at first: it was her fault, after all, that Wash was dead and Serenity almost so.  But gradually she had come to see Mal’s oath as a vow of mercy, mercy toward her as much as himself and Serenity.  This realization had prompted her to go up to the bridge that afternoon, where Mal sat idly refixing Wash’s dinosaurs in place, and tell him:  “You don’t need to take care of me.  But thank you all the same.”

            Mal had looked surprised; then his face closed, and he jerked a nod and began fiddling uselessly with the knobs on the console.  River went away.

            She is pretty sure he understood what she meant.  But there are secret places even she cannot go—will not go—and sometimes Mal lives there.

            Sometimes it is nice not to know.

 

*

 

She cannot see the shadow-man’s face, but she knows he is watching her.

            He is like a cat, this much she knows; patient until teased, aloof from acclaim and shame alike, a runner along fence-tops and a stalker of songbirds.  And fireflies.

            She knows that he knows exactly where to put his feet when he walks.

            Well, so does she.

            Without looking, she knows that Mal is occupied with his work and does not see her.  She walks down the ramp and across the workyard in her new boots.

            By the time she reaches the place between the docks he has long withdrawn, but she is a cat too.

            She follows along the corridor he has taken.  He is nowhere to be seen, but that does not matter.  Without hesitation she chooses the door that leads to a room full of consoles: and there he is.

            He is dressed in Parliament grays, and his dark cheek has a cherubic curve.  His eyes as he turns them to her are full of a very familiar emptiness.

            “You were going to be me someday, you know,” he says.  It takes her a moment to realize that he actually has said it, and not felt it at her.

            “I still have a name,” she tells him, her tone even.

            “Yes,” he says.  _And a talent that has destroyed mine_.

            “Whose fault is that?” she asks him.  She really wants to know.

            “How should I know?  Is there such a thing as fault?”

            _The memory, it’s not mine; I shouldn’t have to carry it_.  It is her own voice she hears this time.  But it isn’t true.  She _should_ have to carry it, because she _can_ carry it…now that she has shared it.

            “We’re supposed to share.  That’s what they teach you,” she tells the shadow-man.

            His vacant face is grave, grave, like a grave, engraven.  “That sort of lesson is in a past that does not belong to me.”

            River shakes her head.  “You are wrong.  Everything belongs.”

            “And nothing belongs.  It is the same.”

            She is frightened, because nobody else has ever understood this.  But she has kept her name, and she has shared, and she and Serenity are starting over.

            “Everything belongs,” she insists.  “Everything belongs.  We have to share,” and she breaks away and runs.

 

*

 

She hides in a quiet corner on board Serenity and cries.  Nobody comes looking for her.  Kaylee is busy.  Simon is busy.  This is a good thing for Simon.  We have to share.

            Zoe is quietly being sick in the bunk she used to share.  Jayne is not on the boat; he is probably eating the dumplings.  Inara is meditating in the empty shuttle, to stave off tears.  Mal is…she doesn’t know where he is.  Shepherd Book should have been here, for her to jab at about this.  _Does this fix me_? she could have asked him, if he were here, but he is not here.

            River curls into a ball on her haunches and loses herself in crying.

            A gentle, deprecating male hand takes her shoulder.  River half-chokes on a ragged breath.  She thinks at first—Simon, but it is not Simon, and not Jayne.

            “Ain’t no call to rust up the clean spot on this boat,” Mal says quietly.

            She hurts too much to laugh.  She sobs out:  “I n-need my secret back.”

            There is a silence while his hand tightens on her shoulder.  Then:  “Why?” Mal asks.

            Only he would bother to ask why.  “Because he’s wrong,” River weeps.  She can’t look at him, and hides her eyes.  “There’s such a thing as fault.  He’s wrong.”

            “Who’s wrong?”

            She draws a jerking breath for the confession.  “The shadow.”

            “Did he bother you?”  Mal’s voice is hard.

            “N-no.  I was a cat like him.  I walked the fence and stalked the firefly.”

            “You telling me you went looking for him?  Why’d you do a tom-fool thing like that?”

            “I was a cat like him,” River sobs.  “But I still have my name.”

            “_Lao tian_,” Mal mutters on a sigh.  Then, “Now, you listen to me, _nianqing de_.  You’re always gonna have your name.  I didn’t go through all this _goushi_ for you to not have your gorram name.”  He broke off and calmed his voice; his hand relaxed on her shoulder.  “I’m sorry.  I shouldn’t talk rough.  I—”

            “I said we have to share.”

            “And so we do,” Mal says, softly.

            “I don’t want to.”  River is rebellious.  “I don’t want everything to be nothing.  He said everything is the same as nothing and I’m _tired_ of that being true.”

            He grunts.  “That’s a little bit too much philosophy for me.  All’s I know is, it’s not true ain’t nothing lost.  But if you’re lucky, you get to decide how you lose it.”  He releases her shoulder to clap it gently.  “When you feel better, come up to the bridge.  I’ve got a job for you.”  She hears him heave himself with a soft groan to his feet, and his firm, unplanned footsteps fade away.

            Mal is a horse, she decides.  If she’s a cat and the shadow is a cat and Zoe is a greyhound and Jayne is a baboon and Simon….

            _Enough to make a cat laugh_.

            Maybe all is not lost.

            She hopes so.

            River gets up, to go up to the bridge.

 

*

 

_finis_


End file.
